A home electronic appliance, such as an Internet gateway of the set-top-box or ADSL box type conventionally comprises a casing incorporating at least one electric circuit card and an antenna that is connected to the electric circuit card to enable the electronic appliance to exchange data with other electronic appliances (e.g. belonging to the same WiFi type wireless network).
The placing of the antenna on the card or in the casing is generally defined during a design stage preceding the design of the printed circuit of the card, with said prior design stage also involving stages of designing the electrical circuit for the card, performing radio simulations, modeling, testing, etc.
The placing of the antenna is thus already frozen at the time the printed circuit is designed and fabricated, the electronic components are soldered on the card, and the card is incorporated together with the antenna in the casing. Unfortunately, it can happen that the operation of the system formed by the card and the antenna differs from what was expected, e.g. because of interference being underestimated between the antenna in question and another antenna on the card, or as a result of a late mechanical modification to the casing having an influence on the radiation pattern of the antenna, etc. When such a phenomenon requires the placing of the antenna to be modified, it is necessary to design and fabricate a new printed circuit, which tends to increase the cost of developing an electronic appliance.